When Riverside officials pledged to house all homeless veterans in the city by the end of 2015, they knew it would be challenging.

An initial list of 41 people ballooned to 89 as homeless advocates learned the names of more veterans on the streets. And they had only six months to find everyone shelter to meet President Barack Obama’s challenge.

Working right up to the deadline, advocates found a spot for the 89th veteran on the afternoon of Dec. 31, city Homeless Services Coordinator Monica Sapien said.

Although nobody thinks Riverside has permanently solved the problem of veteran homelessness, Sapien said, meeting the 2015 goal forced advocates to collaborate, leaving them better equipped to deal with the problem.

“Do we understand that we are never going to get to … zero? Absolutely. Homelessness is always going to exist,” she said. “But there’s a streamlined process now should we encounter a homeless veteran. That is absolutely huge.”

Since Jan. 1, advocates have learned of more homeless veterans in the city. After a Jan. 26 countywide homeless count, six veterans received housing vouchers at Riverside’s homeless access center, Sapien said. Official figures from the count won’t be released until March.

‘A COMPLETE BLESSING’

Getting 89 people under roofs in short order required a variety of solutions, said Emilio Ramirez, the city’s deputy director of community and economic development.

Those who needed help with addiction were placed in drug treatment centers, where they can stay until they recover.

Others were helped to find affordable apartments, paid for with federal vouchers, or given beds in supportive housing facilities, which serve people with mental illness or other issues that may contribute to homelessness.

The best solution, which happened in six cases, is when a veteran can be reunited with his family, Ramirez said.

One of the last veterans to get housing at the end of December was Ed Sherwood, who said he served in the Army around 1976 and 1977 before receiving a discharge to address problems at home.

Dressed in a T-shirt and baggy jeans with dark hair and a weathered face under his knit cap, Sherwood, 60, sat recently in his new apartment on Arlington Avenue in Riverside. The living room is sparsely furnished with a plastic chair, a glass-topped table, a shopping cart in the corner and a blanket on the floor for his dog, a friendly German shepherd named Mallie.

Although he has been sober for 10 years, Sherwood said his life went downhill when his mother suffered brain damage after a heart attack and needed nursing care and his father became ill with lung cancer. Both since have died.

Sherwood had been on the streets about two years when a police officer spotted him near a McDonald’s and told him about the city’s emergency shelter. He didn’t want to stay in the shelter – he thought he’d feel too closed in – but he was ready to get off the street, he said.

Homeless advocates helped Sherwood fill out the paperwork to get the apartment, which he called “a complete blessing.”

“I thought homelessness was going to be my avenue for the rest of my life until I died,” he said.

MORE TO DO

The challenges facing homeless advocates include getting veterans to trust them, persuading landlords to accept them as tenants and getting local, state and federal agencies and nonprofit groups to coordinate their efforts.

To find suitable apartments, Riverside staged a “landlord fair” for property owners and managers. Sapien said one veteran had been homeless about six months and came to the city shelter with no personal documents of any kind, but advocates were able to connect him with the Veterans Administration and other services.

They took him to the landlord fair, where he found a place. “He was literally able to move in and cook dinner that night,” Sapien said.

Not all landlords are reluctant to rent to previously homeless vets. Al Salehi, who owns three complexes in Riverside with his father, Max, said they look at veterans’ applications first. The Salehis own the apartments where Sherwood now lives.

“We respect (veterans) and we want to give back to them as they’ve given to us,” Al Salehi said.

The city also worked with the U.S. Veterans Administration, Riverside County Housing Authority and Department of Mental Health and the nonprofit U.S. VETS and Lighthouse programs.

Sapien said everyone involved in housing homeless veterans realized there is more work to do, but meeting the 2015 goal helped energize the people. “We believe in this work and what we’re doing, and we’re starting to see the results of our coordinated efforts.”

For Sherwood and other newly-housed veterans, getting under a roof isn’t the end of their challenges.

Once he gets his life back on track, Sherwood hopes to study computer graphic art and possibly turn that interest into a career. For now, he worries about having enough to eat and getting out of the homeless lifestyle. “All those things you carry out on the street come in with you,” he said.

Alicia Robinson covers cities and local government for the Orange County Register. She has also reported at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, the Daily Pilot in Costa Mesa, and at small daily and weekly papers in the midwest, before she became an honorary Californian based on hours spent in traffic. Besides government and policy, she's interested in animals both wild and domestic, people who try to make the world better, and how things work.

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